The Reserve Bank's ATM reform process passed a milestone yesterday when the first financial institution entered into a one-way, pay per transaction arrangement with an ATM owner. Maritime, Mining and Power Credit Union announced that it had signed a one-way card acceptance agreement with Cashcard, allowing its cardholders to use Cashcard ATMs with no direct charge.MMPCU, which has 22,000 members, already has access to the rediATM network. The new arrangement will give its members fee-free access to almost 7000 ATMs. Cashcard has 5500 ATMs and rediATM 1400.Fee-based one-way arrangements were included as part of the RBA's new ATM access regime, introduced on March 3 with direct charging, as a way of allowing small institutions to gain access to a large ATM network.Unlike a sub-network arrangement, such as the rediATM network, institutions entering into a one-way arrangement cannot provide reciprocal arrangements to the ATM owner.The ATM access regime limits institutions to a single one-way arrangement. The RBA says: "An important consideration in setting this restriction was the desire to avoid a renewed proliferation of bilateral interchange fees."Cashcard is owned by the payment services company First Data. Senior vice president of sales and marketing at First Data Australia and New Zealand, John Tait, said that since the MMPCU deal was signed another four financial institutions have entered into negotiations for one-way card acceptance agreements with Cashcard.Cashcard has three institutions operating within its Feesmart sub-network.The RBA reforms have opened up a new area of business for independent operators such as Cashcard. Tait said: "We are starting to see second tier financial institutions leverage a large ATM fleet."